


Her Name was Anya

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Firefly, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF Charles, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Cherik Big Bang 2019, Erik Has Feelings, Erik has Issues, Erik needs a hug, Erik was at the Academy, Fusion for now, Gen, Government Experimentation, Grief/Mourning, Human Experimentation, Hurt Erik, M/M, Past Erik/Magda, Will be a crossover in the planned sequels, part one of a series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 13:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20310028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr grew up inside the Academy. He was their most promising student, and their greatest failure. Escaping the first time was easy. Erik never intended to allow himself to be taken alive, but the grief of losing his family dampened his abilities until it was far too late.Fifteen years may have passed, but the Academy has changed little. The post-Pandora publicity has only made them crueler, more paranoid. His daughter’s lifeless body always in his thoughts, Erik puts up little fight when they take him.Then there is a cell mix-up, and Erik begins to hear the voice in his head, mysterious and confused and compelling. Pulled back into the world with sharp clarity, Erik is forced to confront the reality of his situation, and to realize that there may still be some things out there worth living for. And some people left, who are worth fighting for.





	Her Name was Anya

**Author's Note:**

> For Cherik Big Bang 2019  
Art by wonderful Destiny_Rain_Evans.  
Tumblr post: https://cherikbigbangandbingo.tumblr.com/post/187016007590/destinyrainevans-art-for-the-wonderful-story-her

“Anya, Anya! Don’t go too far, liebling!” His daughter had had the most beautiful brown eyes. Big and ochre and brilliant, like so many of the animals that followed her every step. Erik had loved those eyes, from the moment they had blinked open for the first time to gaze wonderingly at the butterfly that had just alighted on her tiny, newborn fingers.

To the moment they closed for the last time, still so small hands buried in the fur of her best friend, the fawn’s bleating cries ripping through Erik’s heart over and over and over again.

It had been a perfect day, that last day. The sun shining high in the sky, the air a perfect crystal blue. Magda had packed a red-checked picnic blanket, laughing at Erik as he attempted to introduce their daughter to chocolate ice cream.

Anya had always hated chocolate, for reasons that escaped both her parents. Her hands were smeared with it, her face scrunched up in consternation in her attempts to get _that yucky taste_ out of her mouth. They were all laughing, a jumble of kittens and fawns and rabbits and ladybugs jumping and buzzing all around.

Erik would never forget the crack that rent the air. He was on his feet in a moment, his senses casting out and up and around. Too late. Far, far too late.

The noose had found his neck in the same moment his eyes found Anya’s body, a perfectly round rest stain spreading across the white of her dress, Magda’s sightless eyes staring fixedly at the body of their daughter.

The whole thing was over in less than ten seconds. Shaw was nice enough to tell Erik that, as his perfectly coiffed pant cuffs entered Erik’s vision, the man’s hand brushing through his too-long hair, even as he struggled and snapped, deprived of even enough oxygen to scream.

“Ah Erik, we both knew this moment would come. I will always find you Erik, you know that. You are mine, my boy, mine. Body and soul.” It had taken everything Erik had left to _flick_ the wire of the noose against Shaw’s cheek. _Whaptz!_

A bead of blood welled up and fell to the grass. Erik relished the feeling of triumph it brought him, of satisfaction, the sight of that blood.

Sebastian ghosted a hand over his cheek for a moment, before erupting into a full body laugh, right there in the clearing, the bodies of Erik’s family staining the picnic blanket an even deeper red.

“Oh Erik, still so _fiesty_! Perfect! Wunderbar!”

Erik looked back at his family for as long as he could, until a stale hood was pulled across his head, as suffocating then as it had been fifteen years earlier.

And then, there was nothing.

Erik woke with a gasp, biting his own tongue to prevent the sound from escaping. He relished the taste of iron on his lips. The echo of a fawn’s cries rang in his ears.

The cell door opened with a screach, Shaw’s smiling face filing his vision. The straps rattled ominously. Shaw smirked at the noise, “Still want to kill me Erik? What would your daughter say, my boy?”

Erik had learned as a boy that sometimes, the true victory was in knowing when _not_ to react.

If Shaw’s frown at Erik’s silence was anything to judge by, he had just scored in a point in this twisted game of theirs.

But with the memory of his daughter’s broken body as fresh in his mind as it ever was, the victory felt bitterly hollow at best.

zzz

“Erik, this is Dr. Schmidt.” His teacher’s voice had shaken as she formed the words, wobbling and fading in and out. Erik remembers feeling scorn and anger, not an ounce of sympathy for her obvious terror in his soul.

He had been eleven years old, effectively orphaned by Alliance politics and power, about to be handed over to the Academy like a prized pig. He had hated everyone and everything, at that age.

“Hello Erik!” The voice had _oozed_ charm and sophistication, the face open and eager, the eyes hungry and almost lustful. Erik rmembers his skin had crawled, even at that age, even not quite knowing who the man pumping his hand up and down with unnatural enthusiasm was or what his intentions were. “I’m so pleased to meet you! We’re going to do great things together, you and I.”

The teacher’s hand had lingered on his shoulder for a moment, even though she was shaking visibly by that point, even though Shaw’s eyes were as hard as diamonds as they dismissed her, “Thank you Moira, you’ve been most helpful.”

That touch stays with Erik, in the decades that follow. In the loneliness and the pain and the fear, the experiments and missions and tests. And if he can never quite bring himself to forgive his teacher for the part she played in hand delivering him into his own personal hell, he can never quite bring himself to forget her either.

Because that touch is the last shread of kindness that child would ever experience.

zzz

The boy had the oddest eyes Erik had ever seen. He couldn’t get the thought out of his head, even as the pain of yet another round of needles and electricity whitened out his vision and set his every nerve ending alight.

Green in one eye, blue in the other. Both oddly bright, almost psychedelic. Almost...artificial. Another round of pain coursed through his brain and veins, and Erik let it claw and burn at his anger, let it eat away at it until nothing was left.

He wasn’t a father any longer. He didn’t care. He _couldn’t_ care. Even if that boy, slumped in a wheelchair, scars thick and pink and ugly across his forehead, eyes oddly disconnected, reminded Erik of nothing so much as himself.

As the boy he’d been, once upon a time. _Still like them young, do you Sebastian. _

The sarcasm was entirely lost on Shaw, bouncing on the balls of his feet at the control panel, that unhinged grin still firmly in place. Just once, Erik wanted to wipe that smile away for good.

It would only take once. The entire room rattled ominously.

Shaw clapped his hands like a child delighted at a sweet, “Wunderbar!”

When Erik finally slipped into unconsciousness once more, the eyes that haunted him were young and wide and innocent. And as green-blue as the sea.

zzz

“And this, _this_ is our pride and joy, Max!” Erik had always hated presentations in school, his palms slick and his nerves frayed as all eyes focused on him. The Academy had been no different in some ways, for all that he was expected _not_ to speak.

State visits were the worst of it, not the most painful, or the most exposing, or the most inhumane. But still the worst, Sebastian crowing over his _greatest accomplishment_, boasting about Erik’s achievements, the results of the experiments, as if he was a proud father detailing his son’s sports achievements to his business partners.

Erik bit one of the dignitaries once, a visiting head of state from a homeworld that feared the Alliance almost as much as its own citizens did.

The man had watched metal swirling around the room, his eyes locked on the bullets that thudded through solid steel, his hands absent and twitchy as they wandered every closer to Erik’s face.

Erik could sense his fear. But more than that, he could sense his _awe_.

And so, when the hand had come just a little _too _near, Erik had used every last ounce of his training to _yank_ the table just a _little_ higher. It was enough.

The blood and tissue had been thick and choking in his mouth, Shaw’s anger roiling off him like water off a duck’s back. Erik had grinned, bloody and fierce, in the face of Sebastian’s anger. The man had hit him then, back handed him hard enough to knock him clear to the ground.

Arm’s immobilized in cloth restraints, Erik had been unable to catch himself. He’d struck a metal table leg on the way down. The scar from his split lip never truly faded completely. Erik wore it with pride.

Nearly twenty years later, Erik doesn’t even both to raise his head when the visiting dignitary is brought in. Doesn’t bother to flex is power, or draw blood. Even though he could do both with ease. He’s no longer an untrained boy.

But all the preparation and training in the world hadn’t been enough to save his family. So he does nothing. Doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. Doesn’t breath.

Sebastian is the first thing he sees when they resucitate him, disgust and anger marring his still oddly youthful features. “I’m disappointed Erik. I never thought of you as being so weak. Those girls of yours made you soft.”

He says it to provoke. That is patently obvious. Erik refuses to react.

He doesn’t even muster up the energy to turn his head away. He just shuts his eyes, and pretends he’s as dead as he feels.

Shaw leaves in disgust. And even that, Erik can’t find the energy to care about.

zzz

The guard is new, harried and hurried and flustered in the face of the Official Visit. He bangs Erik’s gurney against several walls, gets them turned around twice, and finally dumps him in the dark and leaves with a click of a lock and a frantic stride.

But even in the pitch blackness, Erik can tell from the tingle in the air that this is the wrong cell.

The wrong cell by several floors and a couple levels of security.

But it is silent, and everything is still, and Erik can almost find it within himself to feel gratitude to that inept guard for his complete apathy and carelessness.

It is easier to block out the world, when there is no one left to care about.

And Erik...Erik is done caring. About anyone.

Including himself.

zzz

_Bishop to D7. _Erik blinked up at the ceiling. His eyes had eventually adjusted, but the darkness was so complete that only his metal sense told him which way left or right, or even up or down.

The drugs Shaw bumped him full of drew more disorientating with each passing year.

_Bishop to D7_. The voice was soft, accented, core-bred. Erik drew in a shallow breath. Then another. When he was six, his parents had taken on a long trip, to see a doctor. It was his first time on a core world.

The doctor had found Erik’s imaginary friend less alarming than his parents had, and far less fascinating than the metal blocks Erik had tumbled in the air for her. Her ice-blue eyes had followed every movement of the simple toy with avid, almost preternatural focus.

It took Erik decades to understand the significance of that visit.

_Are you going to move or not? _Erik closed his eyes, but the darkness level remained unchanged.

The image of chess board floated into his mind. It was beautiful, etched out of marble, veins of pink and red running through the polished white surfaces. As he watched, a gold filagre traced its way across the surface of one of the pieces. _Your move, Erik. _

He’d adored his imaginary friend. They learned how to play chess together. Erik hadn’t remembered that, until just now.

_Daddy, your move!_ Anya had been too young to truly grasp more than the rudiments of the game, but she had loved playing it anyway.

The voice went soft. _Erik...your move. _Erik breathed out slowly.

_Knight to F6. _

He lost that game. And the one after that. It had been a long time since he’d played.

The cell door clicked open, the lights blazing on. Erik felt a strange sense of loss run through him. It was the strongest emotion he’d felt since he was ripped away from the bodies of his family. He didn’t want to be alone, not again.

The voice was fainter now, echoing through his skull, almost painful. Somehow, he knew it wasn’t his own pain he was feeling.

But he heard the words anyway. _You’re not alone. _

It was almost a shout now, even as it faded. _Erik, you’re not alone_.

And when he dreamed that night, it was of a little boy with the bluest eyes. A little boy named Charles.


End file.
